Remembering Carl

THERE'S
A BIT of a creative buzz amongst the family and friends at the gathering after
my brother-in-law Carl Aspinall's funeral this afternoon. This
front elevation (right) that he sketched in 1983/84 of our semi-detached
sums up his career:

it's on a recycled letterhead; he always had a practical approach to
saving the environment and he was an enthusiastic supporter of our local
'sink-the-link' campaign about twenty years ago, when there was a proposal
to replace our railway with a six-lane motorway

his background was in drawing, technical drawing, but he gradually went
into building, after enjoying constructing an extension for his uncle.
He worked for twinkly-eyed local character Bill Hemmingway
to gain experience and eventually bought the business when Bill retired,
hence the spare letterheads.

it's a job he did for family; he did a lot for family and friends. Even
in his final illness, about 4 or 5 weeks ago he was still working on revamping
the kitchen for Susan

he did a lot of lateral thinking, for instance in the method he devised
in the extension sketch to fit a standard lift-up garage door into an
opening that apparently wasn't wide enough for it.

I wouldn't have my comfortable, efficient studio above the garage if it hadn't
been for Carl's ingenious plan for fitting the extension into the limited space
at the side of the house. I'm making him sound like a paragon but of course
there was the downside; his terrible puns! He was joking even when we saw him
the day before he died and he was still enthusiastic about a new software project
that his son Arden was developing and promoting in Barcelona at the time. That
was a real bright spot in his day, chatting on the phone to Arden about the
enthusiastic reception the project was receiving there.

The drawing above is of Carl and Susan playing Cleudo at Barbara's
mum and dad's on New Year's Eve 31st December 1990.

At
the gathering I was comparing sketchbooks with Carl's grand-daughter Emily,
who is as enthusiastic about art as she is about writing. I sketched cousin
David and 360° photographer Mark (left),
currently working with Arden on a project.

I'd
drawn David back in the 1980s as one of the characters in Hattie in a Hurry
by Kay McManus, that's David's daughter Rachel,
who was also here today, on the cover (right) in the title role. David
played the part of the bus driver and oddly, about ten years later, he became
a bus driver. He drove a bus in Sydney at the time of the Olympics but he's
back on local routes in West Yorkshire now.

In the story the bus driver stands by the bus eating a pork pie when Hattie
arrives in the sleepy Dales village but David remembers that for the Polaroid
photograph I took of him he held a soft-toy hedgehog.

'You've made me look as if I'm holding a pint pot!' he says of today's drawing
(it was a mug of tea!).